Irish and Clare history book recommendations

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barbarad
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Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by barbarad » Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:23 am

I recently joined this forum and am thrilled to be in the company of you masterminds!
I'm in the US, a granddaughter of Clare, working on a study and pilgrimage of Wells.
It would be a help to me if you who are reading this could give a recommendation for a good basic general Irish History book. Or several. Or comments on any such. I'm too embarrassed to tell you what I have on hand...


barbara

mcreed
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Re: history book recommendation?

Post by mcreed » Mon Aug 04, 2008 10:19 am

Hi Barbara,
these titles should be a good basis:
"A History of Ireland: From the Earliest Times to 1922" by Edmund Curtis;
"The Course of Irish History" by T. W. Moody;
"The Oxford History of Ireland" by R. F. Foster and
"Ireland: A History" by Robert Kee.
They're all available on Amazon. Irish History is of course a very contentious subject and for every description/interpretation/assertion you'll get at least a few historians/enthusiasts rushing to contradict it. It's hard enough to find out what's really happening right now in Ireland without trying to find out what happened (and why it happened and what it meant) 1000 years or more ago. The rise of the Celtic Tiger and the result of the Lisbon Treaty vote would be good examples of that.
All the best,
Mike

Paddy Casey
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Clare history books

Post by Paddy Casey » Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:57 pm

Hi Barbara,

You did ask specifically about Irish history books and Mike has given you plenty there for the next couple of days reading.

However, if you should decide to narrow your focus to books on County Clare you might like to read the following:

"Family and Community in Ireland" by Conrad M. Arensberg and Solon T. Kimball (see http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/librar ... review.htm ) is a book which is based on a research project in Clare in the 1930s. It is a serious academic work (410 pages) filled with statistics and examples. It takes you back to that era, plonks you down in Clare, takes you across the fields and into farm kitchens and haggards, lets you eavesdrop on farmers' visits to each others houses in the evening, leads you through the streets of Ennis and into the shops and clubs, explains the complex bargaining behind an arranged marriage, describes the place of the elderly in the family and community, and so on and so forth. In a nutshell, it explains why your family developed the way it did. For example, it
- describes family relationships in rural Clare and the town of Ennis and the significance of consanguinity for social relationships;
- explains why your ancestors may or may not have married or married extraordinarily late in life;
- explains the complex unwritten rules under which land was passed from parent to child (and thereby gives you, as a family historian, clues as to which child might have inherited the farm and stayed there and which child(ren) didn't get the farm and would therefore be under pressure to emigrate;
- explains, for example, the social rules under which a shopkeeper in Ennis might hand his shop over to a son (again, key information for the genealogist wondering why Michael didn't inherit his father's shop but left for Australia);
- explains the importance of the extended family as a working unit in the rural West. Strong ties between families in a locality led to close collaboration in daily farming work (e.g harvesting, cutting turf, clearing land of heavy objects).
All in all, the book gives vivid accounts of the kinds of lives your ancestors would have led and so adds flesh to the "bones" of your family tree.
Published by CLASP Press and can be ordered via email to clasp@clarelibrary.ie

The Strangers Gaze: Travels in County Clare: 1534-1950, edited by Brian O Dalaigh is an anthology which brings together over four centuries of superb accounts of County Clare by visitors from Ireland, Britain, the Continent, Australia and America. These visitors include such notables as Arthur Young, William Thackery and Thomas Carlyle. While their accounts enlighten and entertain, they also provide fascinating insights into the social, religious, and cultural traditions of County Clare. See http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/librar ... s_gaze.htm
Published by CLASP Press and can be ordered via email to clasp@clarelibrary.ie

The Antiquities of County Clare: Ordnance Survey Letters, 1839, by John O'Donovan & Eugene Curry is a collection of letters sent back to the Ordnance Survey office in Dublin by Eugene Curry and John O'Donovan as they went about Clare in the early part of the 19th century surveying the county to establish the exact boundaries of townlands, the smallest Irish administrative divisions which had long been in use for public and private transactions but which had never been properly delineated. See http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/librar ... review.htm
Published by CLASP Press and can be ordered via email to clasp@clarelibrary.ie

Poverty Before the Famine, County Clare 1835 is based on the First Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for inquiring into the condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland. Required reading. See http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... _index.htm
Published by CLASP Press and can be ordered via email to clasp@clarelibrary.ie

Those four will get you going and I'm sure Mike and the other experts in this forum will keep you supplied with titles to read once you have read these.

Paddy
Last edited by Paddy Casey on Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

moc66
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Re: history book recommendation?

Post by moc66 » Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:01 pm

Hi Barbara
Those lists of history books should keep you occupied for a long time. I see by your post that you are researching holy wells and pilgrimages, a tough one. It was once said by a local wag at the time of the Second World War that if we had oil wells instead of holy ones that Hitler would be here in a flash! Here is the website of an organization dedicated to upkeep and restoration of holy wells in Ireland, http://www.slaine.ie/ a bit disorganized but lots of information there. The holy wells are one of our oldest monuments and were there long before St Patrick and the other saints. The early Christians blessed the wells and adapted them into their ways from the older Druidic beliefs.

Good luck with your studies Michael.

Paddy Casey
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Website on Irish wells

Post by Paddy Casey » Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:01 am

Thanks very much for flagging this website on wells, Michael.

As you say, it is a bit disorganised. For example, I went to the page on Galway wells and found a row of yellow bars with nothing under them except a reference to Discovery maps. I looked under "Galway: Kinvarra, Kilcolgan, Loughrea & Gort areas" and couldn't find any wells listed. Finally I noticed the tiny "Read more" at the bottom right, clicked on it and found, for example, Peterswell listed with at least a dozen different map references (are there several Peterswells in the Kinvarra, Kilcolgan, Loughrea & Gort areas or is the well so magic that it is moving around ?). I have precise GPS positions for some wells around the Clare/Galway border but couldn't even find out where to contribute them.

Such a pity, because an inventory of the wells is such a good idea but is obscured by the "busy" and maze-like website design.

I tried to send the website owners feedback via their "Contact us" facility. After laboriously composing the mail and hitting "Enter" I got the message "Sorry, mail wasn't sent. Please try again later". I subsequently received an email telling me that *The mail server could not deliver mail to ssage@honorthemedia.com. The account or domain may not exist, they may be blacklisted, or missing the proper dns entries".

Such a pity.

Paddy

Clare Admin
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by Clare Admin » Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:12 am

Hello all. "The History and Topography of the County of Clare"by James Frost would probably be the best place to begin for an overview of the history of County Clare. The "Antiquities of County Clare: Ordnance Survey Letters, 1839" by John O'Donovan & Eugene Curry mentioned by Paddy is also available on the library website as the "Ordnance Survey Letters". Our archaeology section also features Holy Wells of Clare. Regards, Clare Admin.

barbarad
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by barbarad » Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:53 am

Many thanks for all this response! I have lots of homework to do now! Seriously, it's very helpful to have this guidance. I'll start with what general references I can obtain most easily - a neighbor of mine has quite a library of Irish material, I'm told.

I have been working with Clare material from the website, (which I think is absolutely wonderful) in fact I got so excited when I found the list of Holy Wells -- I was at a public computer with no printing capability -- that I sat and copied the whole list of 220+ out by hand! My "pilgrimage" has involved a trip each year, centered in West Clare (Map 57) and the "study" is actually more like a diary. I just go out with the map and then write down whatever happens that day. I'm trying now to organize it by parish and townland for when I am there next month.

So Mr. Casey if you want to contribute GPS coordinates of wells that you know about, I'd love to have them!

I got acquainted with the Slaine website a while ago, a couple of years, really, when I first got interested in learning more about the Holy Wells and found that the book I wanted to read didn't exist. I think there was a bit of excitement on the subject that then died down. Maybe died out completely. No crows on the internet to clean away the corpses. There's also a yahoo group "Irish Wells" that had lots of activity for a while but is now very quiet.

Sorry if I'm running on. Somehow I don't think you all mind.

Peace!
Barbara

Paddy Casey
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by Paddy Casey » Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:17 pm

Barbara,

I've posted the Clare well for which I have a GPS position (Tobereenatemple) on http://www.geonames.org (just search for that name). The others are just on the other side of the Clare/Galway border.

GeoNames is a great place to upload GPS coordinates because the GeoNames database is used by a lot of mapping organisations and Web mapping tools and it projects directly onto Google Earth images.

By the way, I love good metaphors and similes so your one about the internet carrion ( = dead websites) really had me laughing heartily. There definitely is a need for a kind of web crawler (WebVulture ? WebCrow ?) which would go around clearing up junk sites.

Paddy

M. McNamara
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Location: Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare

Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by M. McNamara » Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:26 pm

Eddie Lenihan has written several articles in various issues of "The Other Clare" concerning holy (or blessed) wells in Crusheen and surrounding parishes. Modestly, I admit to having written an article in the Sixmilebridge parish magazine about these wells in the Sixmilebridge area. The above articles generally describe the name, location, present condition, cures, patterns (if any), means of payment and folklore associated with the wells. To my knowledge, none of these articles are on the web.

General literature on the subject is surprisingly scant considering every parish has at least one well. Sixmilebridge has/had four. What literature there is runs the gamut from the plain and factual to a new age type of interpretation.

Clare Past Mod
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Holy Wells of County Clare

Post by Clare Past Mod » Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:19 am

Thanks to valuable contributions by a number of knowledgeable forum members the subject of the holy wells of County Clare has taken on legs under the subject "Irish and Clare history book recommendations" ( http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=347 ) so it is now being moved to a new thread under its own name "Holy Wells of County Clare" (see http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=348 ) to help Subject browsers find it.
.
Please continue to post your contributions on the subject of Clare wells there.

Irish and Clare history book recommendations continue on this thread.

Thank you.

Clare Past Moderator

Clare Admin
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by Clare Admin » Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:35 pm

In relation to this topic, you may be interested in The Irish History Online Project, an online bibliographic project whose aim is to "make available a fully searchable online database of Writings on Irish History, originally published in Irish Historical Studies, later on microfiche, and subsequently in booklet form...

"Irish History Online is an authoritative guide (in progress) to what has been written about Irish history from earliest times to the present. It has been established in association with the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History (of which it is now the Irish component) and London's Past Online...

"The entire corpus of data from Writings on Irish History from 1936 to 2001 went live in October 2006, comprising some 58,000 records. A second three-year phase of funding has been awarded under the IRCHSS Government of Ireland Project Grants Scheme, to run from 2006 to 2009. Phase 2 of Irish History Online has two main aims: to improve coverage of more recent titles, and to enhance coverage of the Irish abroad and works on Irish history published abroad."

For more information see http://www.irishhistoryonline.ie/projhist.php and http://www.irishhistoryonline.ie/index.php. Search the online bibliography at http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/ireland.asp. Clare Admin

barbarad
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by barbarad » Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:49 pm

now I'm officially overwhelmed with recommendations! thanks so much.

barbara

moc66
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by moc66 » Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:37 pm

Hi
A recent book launched in Glandore Co Cork in July "Traditional Boats of Ireland" history, folklore and construction a must for anyone interested in the sea and boats. But also folk interested in how our ancestors lived on the coast, rivers and lakes and how the different boats evolved over time. Here is a link to press release on publishing of the book http://www.tradboats.ie/TradBoats_PressRelease.pdf , http://www.tradboats.ie/ The book is quite large contains over 600 pages has fine photos and illustrations. It retails at €60 and is available in all well stocked bookstores. Edited by Críostóir MacCárthaigh Archivist University College Dublin published Collins Press Cork
Michael

moc66
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by moc66 » Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:10 am

Hi
Here is a book with a different look on Ireland's maritime history by Bob Quinn "The Atlantean Irish: Ireland’s Oriental and Maritime Heritage" http://www.conamara.org/atlantean.htm . I will be making comments on Paddy's post The importance of the sea & waterways to Clare history this is just a post to recommend the book.
Michael

barbarad
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Re: Irish and Clare history book recommendations

Post by barbarad » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:38 am

some progress...
I've finished Robert Kee's book, which I found helpful and informative on 20th Century events, but rather irritatingly given to adverbs! Also it seemed to me that while trying to appear impartial he had a few blind spots. Not to go into that here...

Started the "Oxford History" but find it very tedious; it reads like a giant footnote and I want to read the story.

Started Curtis's book, which is more engaging and offers fuller coverage of earlier times.

Boats... I printed off the information on the Traditional Boats book. Thanks for posting it here.

Any opinions on "Gods and Heroes of the Celts" by Marie-Louise Sjoestedt? Not history, I know,

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